Filmmaker gagged by the Technoviking, bankrupted by legal bills

Filmmaker Matthias Fritsch shot a video that became a viral hit, known as "Technoviking". For the last three years, he's been battling the protagonist over "personality rights". He's now raising funds on Indiegogo to make a documentary about the ordeal.

The camera shows a motley crew of ravers dancing to techno in a Berlin street. After about a minute, a topless hulk of a man comes into shot, and wards off another male with alpha aggression. He approaches the camera, points his finger in the air and then starts pacing forward, like a warrior leading his troops into battle. An aide holds a bottle of water in front of him, which he snatches, sips, and hands back. The music drops, and Technoviking starts to dance, a phalanx of ravers behind him.

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The four-minute video -- shot at Berlin's Fuckparade in 2000 -- has been a huge hit for Matthias Fritsch, the artist who shot and uploaded it. It has also been a huge ball-ache for him: he's been embroiled in a legal battle in Germany with the video's protagonist for the last three years. The raver that became immortalised as Technoviking argues that Fritsch didn't get clearing for "personality rights" and should remove the video from the web, along with all derivative videos, parodies, and mash-ups: he was trying to delete the meme.

Fritsch doesn't believe he's the creator of Technoviking. "I didn't even come up with the name," he told Wired.co.uk. He initially uploaded the video to his own website in 2001 -- way before YouTube launched -- under the title "Kneecam No.1". He was particularly intrigued by how staged the footage looked: he had filmed the video from the back of a slow-moving truck holding the DJ at the parade, which explains why the dancers all start moving towards the camera in unison -- they are following the music. "I didn't post it as a documentation of the Fuckparade," he explains. "I posted it because it posed this artistic question: is it real or staged? When I looked at the imagery I saw this question automatically coming out of the footage."

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Fritsch was happy for his video to be reappropriated and remixed by others in this way, since meme culture lies at the heart of his artistic practice. "I publish videos for people to start to remix and recycle. I believe that all art is the result of a collective process. There are no original masterminds. Even people who think they are original learned their process by going to art school, looking at someone else's work."

[pullquote source="Matthias Fritsch]
Two years and millions of hits later, a letter landed on Fritsch's doorstep. It was Technoviking's lawyer [Fritsch doesn't want to get into any more trouble by identifying the plaintiff by his real name], demanding that Fritsch agree to unpublish the video and never use it again for commercial purposes. Fritsch had made around €10,000 from the video through YouTube ad revenue, licensing the clip to a couple of TV shows and through the aforementioned T-shirt sales. The letter was threatening to sue him for €250,000 if he didn't comply.
Fritsch says that he can "totally understand" why someone wouldn't want their image to be spread across the web in such an uncontrollable fashion, but feels that in the case of Technoviking, "everybody has respect for him". "Nobody thinks he's the biggest loser in the world like other viral stars," he argues.

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It was particularly confusing that it took two years for the letter to arrive. Fritsch says that he tried to track down the protagonist when the video started to go viral, but couldn't find him. By the time the lawyer got in touch it was "already too late to have an effect. You can censor something, but you can't remove it. It was already outside of my control. It's absurd".

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Fritsch says that he offered to talk directly to the 'viking to find out how they could collaborate in a mutually beneficial way. "I offered to share any of the money that was produced and to think of ways to market [the meme] if he was interested. But I didn't get any answers."

When the lawyers persisted, Fritsch offered to not use the video for any commercial purposes, but only show the video offline in an educational context -- he'd been involved in researching and lecturing on meme culture and user recycling strategies. "I tried to find a compromise, but they didn't even move a tiny step," he says.

After three years of wrangling, a decision was reached in court:

Fritsch was forced to agree to only use the video if he manipulates the images in such a way that he can't be identified. Despite this, there's a sense that the horse has very much bolted. Fritsch might have been gagged, but there are hundreds of other artists who have made derivative works that will remain online. "It's too late.

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That's the whole absurdity of the trial."

[Quote"]I tried to find a compromise, but they didn't even move a tiny step [/pullquote]

In addition to censoring the video, Fritsch must pay the plaintiff €8,000 -- the vast majority of the money he made from the video. That's on top of the €7,000 in legal bills. He says that the trial will bankrupt him. "I haven't had the bill yet. The final letter came on 10 June," he says, despondently.

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The case might be over, but Fritsch now plans to explore meme culture, web celebrities, and their interplay with the law in a documentary -- The Story of Technoviking -- for which he's currently raising funds on Indiegogo.

"As producers of digital culture we are covered by laws that come from another time of media production. It makes it very difficult to orient what's possible and what's not. Meme culture is like using a language. You learn a word, you get to know a meme, and you start using it. You add something and repost it. Who owns the idea? How much do you have to add in order to be able to use it?" "The law has to develop in a way that means that people who use material in a non-commercial way to make culture more rich aren't criminalised," he adds.

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Reflecting on the trial, he says: "What is the sense of it? The meme won't be banned form the web. In fact it's just better known because of the big fuss that the plaintiff made by not trying to settle out of court."

These issues will be explored through interviews with experts in digital culture and lawyers. "The film is not just about Technoviking, but what technoviking stands for."

If you want to see the movie, you can head over to Indiegogo and help Fritsch reach his target.